Over the last four years, GFAR has played a leading role in mobilizing awareness and learning about farmers rights, to help farmers continue to benefit from the crop varieties and traits they have developed over generations, both in their own use and when used for further breeding.
In partnership with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and with the amazing farmers and civil society organizations who are championing farmers rights around the world, GFAR has directly shared knowledge and learning to promote the conservation and sustainable use of these vital resources by communities themselves, as their birthright and heritage.
Smallholder farmers seldom have a direct voice in shaping policies and understanding of their needs. To celebrate the often unsung work of farming communities, GFAR has commissioned a series of short videos telling the farmers’ stories in their own words. We hope that these videos will help understanding at all levels and enable many other farmers to gain from these successful practices. The videos tell a vital story of why the living conservation and use of these irreplaceable resources are crucial, not just to the communities concerned, but to all our futures.
Available in English and two Malawian languages (Chichewa and Tumbuka), with more translations planned, these training videos will help to raise farmers’ awareness across the country. They will soon be shown in farm clubs, on local TV, and aired on the radio. We also expect many farmers will view the videos directly on their mobile phones.
We hope you enjoy watching!
Click the photo below to watch Farmers’ rights to seed
A range of farmers’ capacity development materials have been generated by Juanita Chaves Posada of GFAR Secretariat, working with GFAR Partners in Malawi and Central America. Find out more about this work and how it supports seed policy development at the dedicated page on the GFAR website. In the blog post Richness in Diversity, Paul Van Mele of Access Agriculture, talks about his experiences during production of the video.